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GroupLens Team

Professors

John Riedl

My research focus is on collaborative systems that support human interaction through computer systems. My career goal is to understand how to develop and apply computer technology to the problems of human organizations.

One of the biggest such problems is getting the right information to the right people. The Internet has democratized the publishing process. Now, anyone who wants can publish anything they want, just by creating a Web site. We humans are hopelessly overmatched by the increasing volumes of information that are published. Collaborative filtering is a technology that enables us to all work together to sift through the millions of documents on any topic to find those that are most appropriate for each of us. Collaborative filtering works by learning which kinds of documents each of us likes, and finding other people who share out interests.

We are working on improving collaborative filtering by extending the amount and type of information it presents to users, the range of interfaces that it supports, and the other types of filtering algorithms with which it can be combined. For instance, we have explored ways to create explanations of collaborative filtering recommendations so users can understand why documents were recommended to them. We are also exploring community interfaces to collaborative filtering, which have the potential to strengthen the relationships between people in a group by helping them discover what they have in common with others in the group. We have also looked at communities in which some members of the community are not people, but are information filtering agents helping the people work more effectively.

Across our entire research program, our goal is to understand how computers can be used to help people process information more efficiently, and work together better.

Joseph Konstan

Prof. Konstan is interested in a wide range of topics under the general category of Human-Computer Interaction. His current work is mostly concerned with three areas:

  • Recommender Systems -- systems that provide personal recommendations based on a community of users' experiences. The GroupLens Research Project developed the technology for automated collaborative filtering (a type of recommender algorithm) and currently is applying the technique to content ranging from movies to research articles in a digital library.
  • Online Community -- studying why people choose to contribute to online communities and how to design communities to better foster participation of their members. Specific efforts include experiments with incentives to see how users respond and interdisciplinary (and multi-university work) to bring together psychology and economics to better inform interface design for online communities.
  • Computer Systems for HIV Prevention -- Prof. Konstan has been working for over five years with HIV Prevention researchers to assess the differential risks undertaken by men seeking sex with other men through online venues, and developing (and soon testing) an online intervention designed to reduce sexual risk-taking and sexually-transmitted infections.


Loren Terveen

My research interests are human-computer interaction and computer-mediated communication. I have done research in specific areas such as collaborative filtering, web search and information management, intelligent interfaces, organizational memory, and visualization. There's one problem I'm most interested in - using technology to help people create and develop strong social ties. I want to help people form communities based on shared interests. And I want to help members of local and institutional communities develop stronger connections. To pursue this goal, I'm guided by two research themes. Combining information and social spaces. I want to create online spaces where users interact with information (content) and other people - a simple example might be a music environment where people can both listen to music and find and interact with other people with similar tastes in music. I'm also interested in techniques for extracting information from records of people's online social activity - for example, extracting recommendations of web pages from Usenet messages. Combining physical and virtual interaction. I'm convinced that building strong social connections requires face-to-face, in-person interaction, that electronic communication alone just won't do the job. So I'm interested in ways to use electronic communication to enhance and strengthen existing communities whose members already have some face-to-face contact. I'm also interested in the use of mobile and location-aware devices that can integrate interaction in physical and virtual space.

Students

Aaron Halfaker

My research interests are in open collaboration systems that focus on the construction of artifacts of lasting value like Wikipedia and open source software projects. Specifically I am interested in applying social psychology theories to understand how people behave in these systems in order to understand and improve, through UI design, how users communicate and collaborate. Much of my current work deals with helping editors of Wikipedia communicate better and understand more about their articles they edit and state of the system in which they interact.

Before coming to the University of Minnesota, I obtained my bachelors degree from the College of St. Scholastica and worked as a software engineer for 3M and Thomson Reuters when it used to be called Thomson West. I also maintain a wide variety of hobbies including mountain biking, amateur mycology and wheelchair basketball.

Arun Mannava

I am a second year Master's student. My interests are in the area of user interface design and social and collaborative computing. I am also interested in web and application development.

Aditya Pal


Andrew Sheppard

I am interested in all technical aspects of the Internet and World Wide Web, with a focus on building and growing collaborative websites. My current GroupLens project is tag synonym detection. I am also interested in data visualization, and am studying third-year Japanese.

Bryan Song

My interests are in participation and collaboration in online communities that build artifacts of lasting value. I am currently studying how editors on Wikipedia interact with each other to create and administer the online encyclopedia. I also have a general interest in the technical aspects of how physical networks, such as the internet, function and examining their relationships with social/human networks.

Prior to coming to the University of Minnesota, I graduated from Syracuse University with a bachelors in Electrical Engineering and worked at Fujitsu Network Communications as an Internetworking Test Engineer.

Fernando Torre

My research interests lie mostly in online social communities. I am interested in exploring how these communities work and what their needs are. I want to look at ways to provide these communities better tools, mostly web applications that are easy to use, compelling, and that provide real value to the users. I am currently working with geowikis as part of my research. Aside from research, I love to play volleyball, enjoy playing a few musical instruments, blog regularly, and am working on becoming fluent in Japanese.

Jesse Vig

My primary research interest is applying techniques from maching learning and data mining to social computing. I enjoy analyzing large data sets and discovering useful information to present back to users in novel ways. Currently, my focus is on collaborative filtering and tagging.

Jilin Chen

My research interest is in understanding online communities and using machine learning technologies to help people solve their problems.

Katie Panciera

I am interested in understanding and explaining who is creating/destroying content on Wikipedia as well as evaluating public health information on Wikipedia. I graduated from Berea College in 2005 with degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science. In 2006, I was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Ken Reilly

I am an Advanced Software Specialist for 3M Track and Trace Solutions and an instructor of Information and Decision Sciences in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.

As a technologiest and business person, I have played a key role in several new business development programs at 3M including 3M's RFID File Tracking, RFID Specment Tracking, and RFID anti-counterfeiting technology. Prior to my current role with 3M, I held positions with Cargill, Inc. and Microsoft. At Microsoft, I contributed to the development of the original .NET platform through their Joint Development Program. At Cargill, I was a subsystem designer for the Lynx application, a global grain origination system.

In addition to my professional work, I have published a number of academic papers regarding tracking, mapping, and mobile applications. I have also been invited to speak in various forums about topics such as RFID tracking and information management in health care, and using Elliptic Curve Cryptography to combat pharmaceutical counterfeiting.

I have a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota. In addition to my ongoing role in new business development for 3M, I continue to do research in Computer Science at the University of Minnesota where I am completing my dissertation for a Ph.D.

Max Harper

I am a doctoral candidate who is interested in when, how, and why people help one another via networked technology, such as Yahoo! Answers, and the design/interface of these websites. Prior to coming to the University of Minnesota, I attended Carleton College and worked as a software developer in Seattle and Denver. I used to be a competitive swimmer and ultimate player: these days I've taken to skiing and squash. I make pizza every week, religiously.

Michael Ekstrand

My interests lie in software systems for enabling people to analyze, organize, and retrieve information in an intuitive manner. I am also interested in computer science education and in the intersection of human-computer interaction and software development, considering both tools for developing interactive software and viewing development tools and programming languages themselves as interaction problems.

Mikhil Masli

I'm interested in using computers and computing technology in making people live with people better. Prior to arriving in Minnesota, I was a software developer at Microsoft, India after completing my Bachelor of Technology degree from the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, India.

Morten Warncke-Wang

My main interest is how people interact and create a sense of community through computing devices, and how we can work to improve that. I'm the research labs' token Norwegian. Before coming to the University of Minnesota I worked as a web developer during the .com boom, first for a distance education company, and then later for Norway's first publicly traded Internet company. Once the boom crashed I left to go back to school and now hold an MS in Informatics from the University of Oslo, where my research area was information design, meaning "how can we improve the quality of the information we create?" When not working I tend to my love for music and guitars.

Mukesh Nathan

My research interests in human computer interaction primarily focus on collaborative systems and location-aware systems. Currently, I am working on projects related to social television in collaboration with AT&T Labs, NJ. Before attending the University of Minnesota, I received by BS and MS in Computer Technology from Bharathiar University, India, in 2000 and 2002 respectively. Following this, I spent two years as a software developer at Novell (Bangalore) working on web servces products including Novell's UDDI server.

Reid Priedhorsky

I am interested broadly in the use of technology to solve social problems created by the modernization of human life.

Currently, my work centers around wikis, especially geowikis, which are the fusion of wikis with geographic information systems. I study the social dynamics of people using wikis and the consequences of these relationships.

In my spare time, I enjoy bicycling, reading, hiking, and backpacking (especially in the mountains and deserts of the American West), tinkering and building things, and general hacking and programming.

Sinan Goknur

I am broadly interested in collaborative systems and social computing and one of my particular interests is application of such technologies to social justice advocacy. My current research is related to sexually transmitted diseases (STD) intervention and prevention using internet technologies. I am the token Turk, the token Tranny, the token 5'6", and the token Public Health Associate in the lab. I hope I am not the token leftist or the token feminist.

Tony Lam


Staff

Rich Davies, Software Engineer


Angela Brandt, Project Specialist


Alumni